Isla’s upcoming movie Life Of Crime received its world premiere on closing night of the Toronto Film Festival last night. Isla was unfortunately not in attendance, but her co-star Jennifer Aniston took on promotional duties for the press conference and premiere. And so we now have our first reviews for the film! Read on to see a few of them, plus The Hollywood Reporter’s report on the films premiere, as well as a Q&A with director Daniel Schechter. The Sound On Sight and The Guardian reviews are particularly complimentary towards Isla’s performance!

– The Guardian

Life of Crime: Toronto 2013 – first look review

Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins and John Hawkes set the scene and dispatch killer dialogue in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch

4 out of 5

Daniel Schechter’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s 1978 novel The Switch was the last movie with which the novelist was intimately involved, and the last film of this year’s Toronto film festival. The final spot on the schedule is not always the most coveted, but this is an unexpectedly winning take from one of the less splashy directors to have attempted Leonard.

It gleams with a faintly-tacky, country club sheen, as if it’d been sheep-dipped in essence of 70s and come out feeling peachy. The woman in the crispest whites is Mickey (Jennifer Aniston), playing the stoical socialite wife of fraudster Frank (Tim Robbins, sweaty and repellant). She becomes the target of an ill-planned plot by Ordel (Mos Def) and Louis (John Hawkes), who plan to kidnap her, and only release for $1m. Problem is: Frank wants her out of the picture anyway, having filed divorce papers before jetting down from still-prosperous Detroit to Florida to catch up with longterm mistress, Melanie (Isla Fisher). The idea of skipping alimony in the bargain means not parting with the ransom is a no-brainer.

Continue reading “Life Of Crime” premieres at TIFF, first reviews available

Toronto: Elmore Leonard’s ‘Life Of Crime’ Near U.S. Deal With Lionsgate/Roadside

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions are nearing a deal for a tag-team release of Life Of Crime, Daniel Schechter’s black comic adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s book The Switch. The deal will be for U.S. rights and it will be worth several million dollars. I will try to get more specific when it closes. The film stars Jennifer Aniston, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), Isla Fisher, Will Forte, Mark Boone Junior, Tim Robbins and John Hawkes. The picture’s World Premiere at Toronto doesn’t happen until Saturday night, when it plays as the closing-night film of the Toronto Film Festival. It has screened for buyers and press and industry.

The film features some of the characters from the Quentin Tarantino-directed Jackie Brown, which was based on the Leonard novel Rum Punch. This one takes place 15 years earlier when career criminals Ordell (Bey) and Louis (Hawkes) team up to kidnap the wife (Aniston) of a corrupt Detroit real estate developer (Robbins). The husband refuses to pay the ransom for his wife’s return and the ex-cons are forced to figure out a Plan B to get paid.

Lionsgate and Roadside have done several successful collaborations that include Margin Call and Arbitrage, and Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing. Those are among the most successful multi-platform releases, but I’m hearing this will likely be a theatrical release. There is certainly a strong cast here. Schechter told me recently that he wrote the script on spec and then was invited by the author (his idol) to hunt down the rights to The Switch because he and Michael Siegel couldn’t remember where they were. Two years later, Schechter collared those rights and got Leonard’s blessing to move forward. Schechter was eager to show the film to Leonard but the author died at 87 a week before Schechter got the film finished. Leonard would have been in attendance at Saturday’s premiere as well.

The film is co-production between Hyde Park Entertainment, Starstream Entertainment, Image Entertainment, Abbolita Entertainment, Ladove Family Trust and the Gotham Group. Pic is produced by Ellen Goldsmith–Vein, Lee Stollman, Liz Destro, Jordan Kessler, Ashok Amritraj, and Michael Siegel. The deal is being negotiated by WME Global and CAA, with Starstream Entertainment’s Kim Leadford.

– Deadline